Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/170

 but on the contrary, the disqualification to exercise it would be an unjust restric tion which, under similar circumstances, would never be put on them in the land of their birth.

17. Hence, also, your Petitioners submit that the fear that they may, if they were allowed to exercise the privilege of franchise, "become propagandists of agitation and instruments of sedition in that great country they come from", is, to say the least of it, without ground.

18. Your Petitioners deem it unnecessary to dwell upon the minor points and the needlessly harsh remarks made in the course of the debate on the second reading. They would, however, crave leave to give some extracts which bear on the subject under consideration. Your Petitioners would rather have been judged by their works than have sought to justify themselves by quoting what others have thought of their race; but, under the present circumstances, they have no other course left open to them, since, owing to want of free intercourse, there seems to prevail much misunderstanding about their capabilities.

19. Speaking at a meeting at the Assembly Rooms, Kennington, Mr. F. Pincott said:


 * We have heard a great deal in this country about the ignorance of the Indian people and their unfitness for appreciating the great advantages of representative government. All that is really very foolish, because representative government has nothing to do with education. It has a great deal to do with common sense, and the people of India are gifted with as much common sense, as we have; we exercised the right of election and we had representative institutions many hundreds of years before we possessed any education whatever. Therefore, the educational test goes simply for naught. Those who know the history of our country know very well that two hundred years ago the grossest superstition and ignorance prevailed, and yet we had our representative institutions.

20. Sir George Birdwood, writing on the general character of the people of India, thus sums up:


 * The people of India are in no intrinsic sense our inferiors, while in things measured by some of the false standards, false to ourselves, we pretend to believe in, they are our superiors.

21. Says Sir Thomas Munro, one of the Governors of Madras: